


i could never give you peace

by rootcoding



Category: Vis a Vis | Locked In (Spain TV)
Genre: F/F, Slow Burn, idk the first chapter is slow but it will get very gay i promise, just zurena actually getting a chance to come to terms with their feelings in the caravan, kinda probably ?, lots of emotional repression and gay shit, might get nsfw in later chapters but i'll put a warning then
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:41:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25531528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rootcoding/pseuds/rootcoding
Summary: macarena and zulema's growing fears around the changes in their dynamic whilst living in the caravan and the tension between them that they are no longer so in control of.
Relationships: Zulema Zahir/Macarena Ferreiro, Zurena - Relationship
Comments: 17
Kudos: 55





	i could never give you peace

**Author's Note:**

> this chapter is kinda short, sorry. i just wanted to get this first conversation between them out there and practice writing them both. 
> 
> they deserved to be able to deal with their feelings in the ineffective way they needed to. macarena thinks zulema doesn't want her and zulema doesn't know how to make it any more obvious that maca is all she has - neither of them will do anything bc 'they have rules' and they don't want to change everything.
> 
> i do have things planned for more if people want!
> 
> also, you can find me on twitter @lyrasjordan so hmu!

Macarena was not yet sure how to categorise the nature of their companionship. What had so recently resembled hatred had now faded to mere distance, like a washed out image left exposed to the sun. The brilliant colours had all dried up, the passion of their fury burnt to silent embers. There was not yet something new to replace the heat of their emotional flame. It hung like an emptiness between them. The awkwardness of a question that did not yet have an answer. Were they friends? Maca was not sure. How could she be expected to be certain when her roommate gave so little away? Zulema had never seemed to care whether the blonde woman despised her or not, appeared indifferent to her pointed looks and spiteful retorts that had since mellowed into an uncomfortable silence. She had qualities about her that enticed the younger woman, _admirable_ qualities she had found lacking in her previous friendships. There was something more, Maca knew it, but what it could be called she had no idea. Macarena simply found herself drawn to her; a moth to a bright flame, fluttering and anxious.

She swallowed hard as Zulema entered the caravan, throwing a glance at where Maca stood by the stove. _What had gotten into her?_

“Pancakes?”

“You offering?” Maca retorted, still whisking her mixture.

“Asking.”

“Yeah, I’ll bring them out.”

“It’s late for pancakes.”

And with that, the dark-haired woman ducked out without another word. Maca released a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. _Irritation_ , she thought; it was because she irritated her. Pouring her pancake mix out into the pan, ignoring the sizzle as batter met fat, she pondered the curious way Zulema had been behaving the past few days. She was always distant, removed, but this was something else.

There would have been a time where Maca would not have batted an eyelid at Zulema’s indifference towards her. Hell, there had even been moments where she had begged for it, but as she watched the woman outside take out yet another cigarette, separated by the glass and a world of unspoken grievances, she pondered the unusual bond they shared, their differences that both attracted and repelled. Macarena had been raised much like a ballerina, disciplined and distracted. If you kept spinning, stepping light and motions controlled, they would never see you falter and fall. It was all for the show, the spectacle. She had always given such little thought to intention, to meaning and regret. The key was simply to not stop - and yet Zulema was so still. She didn’t prod or pray for attention, never backed down from disgrace. Macarena mused for some time as she observed her through the caravan window, enjoying a rare moment of contemplation. Everything about Zulema was thin, angular and sharp. She was a blade; dangerous and sharp. With a half-smile Maca realised it did appear she was growing used to the other woman’s presence.

She wasn’t sure she could leave now if she wanted to. The thought scared her. It shook the foundation she was clinging to that at any moment she could walk out that door and away from this life. She had clung to the concept of ‘normality’ with a grip that tore her fingernails from their beds since her first step into Cruz Del Sur and any sentimentality towards Zulema threatened all of that.

Switching off the stove, she prepared the pancakes for the last, living threat to her pipedream and nudged open the van door to step into the moonlight.

“Zule?” The nickname was one she had borrowed, but it felt friendly and familiar upon her tongue. Maca saw the other woman start at its use. “Here.”

Dropping the plate unceremoniously onto Zulema’s lap, Maca relaxed into the chair beside her.

The silence stretched between them and Macarena grew more irritated with each bite. She could not quite explain why, and if asked would have been beyond words, but she needed the brunette’s focus. She wanted those brilliant eyes fixed on her, the cruel smile she so often flashed to be because of her. She could not quite pinpoint why it mattered so, but when those relentless eyes were focused on her, she had never felt so seen. It was a kind of nakedness. No one had ever thought to look past her charade before she had met Zulema, and she was finding herself quite addicted to the sensation. Sitting in silence beside her felt like an assault.

“What do you think?” She tried.

“Good, rubia.” Zulema’s small smile was a victory but the conversation fell flat once again.

She saw Zulema reach for another cigarette, rolling it gently in her hand. There was something mesmerising about the way her fingers moved so carefully and Maca looked away.

“Can I have one?”

It wasn’t goading. She just wanted a response, anything. But Zulema simply handed her the rolled tobacco and began again for herself in silence.

“Have you spoken to your brother since being here?”

The question was so unexpected Maca did not know how to respond. The topic had floated around the periphery of her anxious spiral for a month or so now but had never registered important enough to be worth acting on. In truth, she hadn’t spoken to Roman other than to tell him she was leaving prison. A week before her release, she had contacted him for the first time in months. Their exchange had been brief and agonising. Maca had not wanted to relive the trauma of attempting to revive a bond shattered by grief and guilt anytime soon but she was wracked with further anguish when she considered what she might be missing out on. That pipedream of normal hovered just a phone call away so why didn’t she make it? Perhaps she knew that if she did, if she considered the possibility of needing her old life again, there was no way Zulema would fit into that jigsaw.

“No. I haven’t.” It was a simpler answer than the truth but it was not a lie.

“You would have a home, if you went to him. He would forgive you.” The words were chosen so carefully, as though Zulema was constructing a cautious front for a dangerous question. Was this what was bothering her?

“He would,” Maca agreed, solemnly. “He would never understand though.”

“Why you would risk a life of crime?”

 _Why I would risk it for you_ , Maca thought but didn’t dare speak aloud. Why was she here, lying on a deckchair beside the woman who had torn her life to shreds? Sleeping in a bed beside the woman she had attempted to murder on multiple occassions? The woman who killed her child, destroyed her family, caused the deaths of her mother, father and niece. The woman who had dragged her unconscious body from that dreaded washing machine and breathed life back through her lips. Macarena had seen Zulema’s power, her indomitable strength and will-power but she’d bore witness to her tragedy too - her grief so tremendous it exploded from her like shockwaves, the tear stained to her cheek in black ink to immortalise her loss. There was nobody in the world who knew Zulema as she did. They were a mirror image. What one lacked, the other held. A seamless team. The perfect marriage. She couldn’t quite confess it, even to herself, but without Zulema, Macarena was incomplete.

“It’s a good question,” was all she muttered in response and Zulema gave a rough laugh. “But, I don’t need his forgiveness. I make my own choices and there is nothing left for me out there.”

“Well, in that way we are the same, rubia.” Zulema lifted her drink in a mock cheer. Maca’s twisted half-smile response only earnt her more silence. It was less uncomfortable this time. The two of them sat beneath the growing darkness, gaze tilted upwards to avoid the intimacy that had been growing in the space between them. Maca knew she could never feel too safe here. Zulema would not allow herself to and so she must remain just as strong. No pets, no permanence. The laws they had laid out so many months ago seemed to be fading over time and with them came the rising tide of ignored emotions. How could she know what they were turning into if she had never even grasped what they were?

“My mother came to visit me, at Cruz Del Norte.”

Maca turned, shifting onto her shoulder to face Zulema. This was a surprise. Not just because the brunette was openly offering Maca access to something deeply personal but because Macarena had always seen Zulema as some parentless, childless entity - although the latter had been proven incorrect. Something beyond the confines of other people’s entanglements. It was oddly human to see the conflicting emotion behind her eyes when she spoke of her mother.

“I don’t remember that.” Maca tried to think back. Zulema so rarely had any visitations and most of them had been with her lawyer. “Was it after I left?”

“You were taking an extended nap.”

“I was in a coma, Zule.”

“I thought she had died,” Zulema continued, not tearing her eyes away from the sky. “I hadn’t heard from her since my first arrest.”

“Why did she come?”

“It wasn’t to see how I was, how I am.”

“Did you want it to be?”

“No,” Her voice still held the same cold contempt but it was tired now, weighted by what she couldn’t say. “But it would have been something.”

Macarena tried to imagine Zulema as a little girl but it just wouldn’t compute. A child who had never known her capacity for violence, whose existence wasn’t hardwired for survival at all cost. Had that girl ever existed? Not that the woman wasn’t plenty childish given half a chance. Maca smiled at the memory of Zule grinning on her new trampoline, the playful way she teased those she loved, the way she dressed and acted like a petulant teenager when left to her own devices and she wondered how much of a true childhood Zulema had missed out on.

“Why did she come then?” There was a pregnant pause as Zulema gazed up blankly towards the stars. Maca nudged further. “If not for you?”

The silence stretched on for a few moments longer.

“Fatima.”

“Oh,” was all Macarena could manage. Zulema never spoke about her daughter. She was a raw nerve. The one true weakness of the formidable scorpion. The creeping guilt in her gut started growing like a weed as Macarena remembered the first conversation she’d ever had with Zulema about her daughter. She’d dismissed her death, her grief, as karma for her own pain. The dark-haired woman had sat on the edge of her bed, only recently vacated by the eighteen year old girl whose life had been so cruelly ended, and told Macarena of her need for action, for vengeance, and she had dismissed her.

“Zulema -” Maca began, but she was interrupted before an apology could break free of her lips.

“Stop.” Macarena watched her take a deep, stabilizing breath before raising her cigarette back to her lips. “She was right. I was a shit mother, always had been. I wasn’t cut out for it. I know what I do well and it isn’t other people.”

There was nothing to say. Maca had no honest response that wouldn’t sound like an agreement. No matter how much she wished it to be untrue, Zulema simply didn’t interact with the world in the same way as other people. _She can’t want you like you want her._

“I’ve never had a home.” Zulema’s lips twitched, clearly uncomfortable with the vulnerability. Her desire to look indifferent only added a childish earnesty and Maca’s heart ached. Reaching out, she closed the distance between them and rested her hand atop her wrist. Too scared to grab her hand, Macarena was surprised the other woman didn’t shake off her loose grip and she rubbed her thumb gently over the exposed skin. “I’ve always been moving from place to place. Survival and freedom were the only goals.”

Zulema never met her softened gaze. She stared pointedly into the stars, full of stories more majestic than their own, as she tried to ignore Macarena’s gentle fingertips brushing against her wrist. It was such a tender gesture, it almost hurt.

“This is the closest I’ve ever had to a home. Here, with you.”

Once again, Maca found herself lost for words. This was not what they had agreed to but it was still miles from her unspoken desire. Without thinking, she raised her hand from Zulema’s wrist and pressed it to her cheek, cupping her face. Half expecting the other woman to pull sharply away, she was surprised as Zule leant into her cautious embrace. Their faces were only inches apart now, both resting their cheeks on the very edge of their chairs. She was just so tantalisingly close. Macarena noticed she had been holding her breath. What was this? What were they doing? Whatever it was felt inappropriate, uncomfortable - needed. Is this what it was like to want so badly what was forbidden? Zulema appeared a little distressed at their proximity too, but, like Maca, seemed incapable of pulling away. Had she ever been so frustratingly close to something she wanted before? Something she really, truly wanted in a way that made her stomach ache and her eyes almost prick with tears. If she held this position any longer, she was bound to cave and there were consequences to those actions she did not dare to even dream of. 

Zulema made the decision for her, pulling back from Maca’s hand and sitting up in the chair. Without another word, she threw the cigarette butt down onto the ground and strode back to the caravan, leaving Macarena under the moonlit sky with her arm still outstretched. The emptiness of her departure felt like a physical weight.

She couldn’t be angry, or upset with Zulema, even as her stomach ached with want and frustrated rejection coiled in her belly, because she understood. It was something Macarena knew all too well, something learned during those long months in prison. Sometimes, if you bury something down deep enough, you don’t even have to leave to escape. You just screw those feelings, memories, experiences into a ball and put it on the furthest corner of the shelf. And you pretend, every day, that each moment you don’t look at it doesn’t count as running away.


End file.
